By GBENGA OKE
DR. Junaid Muhammed, a medical doctor, Convener, Coalition of Concerned Northern Politicians is a Second Republic member of the House of Representatives. He says at 52, Nigeria has nothing to celebrate because successive governments have failed the nation. Excerpts
HOW Nigeria has fared 52 years after
It is self evident that we have not fared well at all. There are factors or indices you can look at and say whether or not the country has done well over a certain period of time. First and foremost, look at the way we were on October 1st, 1960, the poverty rate in Nigeria then was 53 per cent according to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Now, 52 years after independence, the rate of poverty in Nigeria is between 70 and 90 percent. If we use one dollar per head on daily basis, that is 73 to 75 percent, if you use the 2 dollars minimum, you will have beyond 90 percent.
If personal well-being and sense of accomplishment and human development is a factor in any development effort, you will have to agree that Nigeria has not done well at all. Secondly, a nation is judged not only by how wealthy it is but also how secured and stable it is.
Sense of belonging
I need not to tell you that the Nigerian security is in shambles, why, because our government and government institutions are illegitimate, they are not the choice of the people.
Every election in Nigeria from 1959 till date has been rigged, every Nigerian leader has come and gone through a cloud, the bulk of the last 52 years were spent under military rule and of which we had to fight meaningless civil war which costs over onemillion lives of Nigerians from 1967 to 1970.
Dr Junaid Mohammed
In addition to that, the Nigerian elite have failed woefully to give this nation a sense of belonging and a sense of direction. An average Nigerian today is far worse than in 1960 in terms of being each others keeper. In those days, when you meet a Nigerian and wherever you meet him, if you ask where he is from, he will tell you that he is a Nigerian.
But today, when you meet a Nigerian, he will tell you I am an Hausa, Yoruba, Itsekiri, Igbo or whatever. That to me is a fundamental failure that we have failed to infuse into Nigerian values, attitude and a habit of behaviour which will make the average Nigerian feel comfortable and extremely proud to be a Nigerian and be prepared for sacrifices for his fellow Nigerians.
All these have been lost because our elites have been responsible, the desire for power either legitimate or otherwise has become the over-riding driver of politics and political attitude behaviour in Nigeria and no nation in this kind of situation can develop and without development, the nation cannot move forward.
Now speaking about governmental institutions, the political party system and the judiciary; the Nigerian politicians have been irresponsible to the core that they are worst than armed robbers and shameless.
That idea of being shameless is so profound that they can do anything, they can steal and asked people to be killed in the interest for politics and the people they attract into government agencies like INEC are also like that. With all these things happening, you can see that we are not set for nation building, we are not set for nationhood, and we are not ready to meet the re-development aspirations which every country in the world is doing in this 21st century.
Corruption in the judiciary
The corruption in the judiciary today is abnormal. You hear of judges being given hundreds of million and billions and we know judges who have been involved. Some of them have been sacked while some have been forced to resign because of corruption.
If the judiciary is lousy, incompetent or badly afflicted, nothing in the country will move forward and that is the situation Nigeria has found itself today. There can never be any progress as long as the Nigerian judiciary is what it is today.
I hope and have absolute confidence in the current new justice of Nigeria; I hope she will be able to do something. For her to do something there must be co-operation especially from the executive and the legislative arms because some of the laws must be re-defined.
I do not know how we will go about this honestly but this country is in serious trouble. My belief is that normal people that are in trouble will admit they are in trouble and ask what they have done wrong. In the case of Nigeria, nobody asks about that, once you get away with murder, you continue to behave as if murder is a normal state of affairs in your country. Honestly to me, there is nothing to celebrate in this Independence.
China has its own independence in October, the same thing with Nigeria. But if you look at the declaration of the Chinese independence in 1949 compared to our own situation in Nigeria, you will see clearly that China before independence was a much more poorer country, was more challenged in a number of areas than Nigeria. But today China is a world power, it is the second most powerful nation in the world and they cannot be compared to Nigeria in terms of anything.
If you look at other countries that also got independence in the 60's, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Brazil, they are less advantaged than Nigeria in terms endowment, today look at the way they are being regarded as medium powers.
Nigeria‘s absence
Even in Africa today, nobody regards us and our own President was absent at the last meeting of the African Union, nobody noticed his absence, it was the Sudanese President who sorted out the issue of who will be the President of the Council of African Union because Nigeria was absent. So you can see that in every sector, there is nothing to be proud of in this country.
Where and when Nigeria started derailing
Honestly, the situation started getting terrible with the tribal coup of 1966 and to be frank with it, it was an Igbo coup, led by Igbo officers for reason which I am bound to conclude that because they had no way of coming into power on their own and they are not happy with the subordinate status of the NCNC then and they did not have the principle and a sense of virtue, so they conclude dthat if we can't be in government on our own, let us withdraw from the government and be in opposition because the Action Group chose to be in opposition and they remained in opposition but the NCNC wanted to be involved in opposition and also be in government at the same time and it didn't work.
So they went and incited their fellow tribesmen in the Army and they carried out the coup and in carrying out the coup, they borrowed some useless terms about morality, about social justice or socialism or whatever it is and then killed their tribesmen officers and men of other tribes and of course sowing or aggravating the crises that led to the beginning of the civil war in May 1967.
Nation at war
When a nation is at war, you don't ask about policies, you are looking at what will make the nation win the war.
Thereafter, instead of the military organising an election and handing over power, they now created what is called reconstruction, reconciliation to borrow time and remain in power.
When they remained in power, they enjoyed it and they didn't want to leave, Gowon said the date they put for themselves in 1975 was no more realistic, they wanted to remain in power forever but he was overthrown by more ambitious officers and Murtala Mohammed came into power and gave himself 3years, he was about to do that but other officers also now on basis of religion staged a coup an killed Murtala Mohammed.
After that, Obasanjo came but he had to leave because Army was now divided and scared especially the officer corps. When he left, politicians came but initially, election was not properly held and they handed over power to NPN.
Shagari came but unfortunately his coming to power coincided with global crises, so by 1982, Nigeria was already in crises, we were in recession and the inflation was very high.
With that, the Army found another excuse to take over power but now delayed a little bit until after 1983 election which of course was rigged, then immediately after the 1983 election, they pounced on power and the rest was now history.
They decided now to come back again after Babangida tried his own tenure elongation and it did not work, so they had to handover power to the civilians.
Jail term for treason
When that happened, Abiola chapter came in and went out; finally they had to go and bring Obasanjo from prison while serving jail term for treason and now rigged an election that made him President.
In doing that, he did not care about the fate of the nation; he was more concerned in making himself President for life and the rest is now history. When he now eventually handed over power, he went to pick a man who was dying and very sick and he made Yar'Ádua president.
And of course, Yar'Adua died and in replacing him, they made Jonathan President. Jonathan is a man with no experience of governance or whatsoever, he was deputy chairman of Local government, he was deputy governor and his governor was removed in a very controversial manner to make way for him, then he became governor.
Thereafter, he was vice-President and he is now President and also wants to go beyond the limit of the constitution and stay in office beyond two terms and rule the country forever.
And when Jonathan came into power, he brought some bad aides and examples of such is the crisis we are having in the oil sector now.
We have many ministers who are doing very badly in other areas and that is why we are in the present situation we are and I believe it is not a one term and one man affair, it has been entrenched beginning from the Igbo coup of 1966.
With the present situation facing the country now, what do you think needs to be done to bring Nigeria out of these problems?
If you want democracy to be institutionalised in the country, it is not just by proclamation, you have to invite democrats to come and practice democracy.
Democracy entails not only individuals and group behaviours; it entails also dealing with the people in a manner dictated by democracy which includes the wish and wishes of the people. In Nigeria since 1999, we have had the bad habit of electing, people who are not democrats, who have no democratic spirits. We also have the bad habit of bringing to power personalities that are corrupt, irresponsible and unpatriotic.
If we have to practice democracy, we must have people that respect the rule of law, sincere and patriotic about Nigeria.
We must also have leaders who will work above and beyond tribal or religious sentiments or identity, people who will realise that Nigeria is Nigeria and that the only way we can survive and prosper and live in peace is to agree that Nigeria is the only place we have.
Real and true democracy
For all I care, we have to work towards real and true democracy. People continue giving excuses that because we are a multi-lingual country, we cannot live as one nation, it is nonsense.
Every country in the world has different languages and when you have problems of this nature, you handle it in a very statesman like manner. When you have people like Obasanjo presiding over a party from the very beginning is not a democratic party, then you have a very serious problems.
When you also have people with less experience as President or when you have ministers who have less knowledge about what governance is all about, you can see there can be no meaningful democracy.
